


Witness

by CariZee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Background Sam/Jess - Freeform, Crucifixion, Dean/Benny Big Bang 2015, M/M, Rapture AU, beheading things, general nastiness and mentions of torture, only it's a minibang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 06:22:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4169253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CariZee/pseuds/CariZee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not exactly what anyone envisioned, the Rapture. There are definitely tribulations, yeah, and they’re getting more evident by the day. Some people might have been saved—if by saved, you mean disappeared without any goddamn trace overnight. And some people are the same as they’ve always been. Religious folks call them witnesses, while others call them victims. Because the people who don’t stay the same, the ones that change…they’re changing fast. And they’re turning out to be scary as fuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witness

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution for the 2015 Dean/Benny Big Bang! Artwork courtesy of lostemotion, isn't the graphic lovely?

 

Witness

 

_“If this is the Rapture, then God is a motherfucking reality TV show producer.” – Dean Winchester_

 

                Is it really the Rapture? It’s hard to say. It’s definitely an event of some kind, the whole world bathed for a second in cosmic light. Reporters were quick to call it solar flares, radiation, nuclear weapons, a shift in the poles—anything that could remotely be dubbed “science.” Religious nuts were equally quick to call it the second coming of Christ, and exult over the fact that they were about to be saved. In the end it looks like they’ve come closer to the truth, although so far there _is_ no end, and the truth is…well, it’s problematic.

                It’s not exactly what anyone envisioned, the Rapture. There are definitely tribulations, yeah, and they’re getting more evident by the day. Some people might have been saved—if by saved, you mean disappeared without any goddamn trace overnight. And some people are the same as they’ve always been. Religious folks call them witnesses, while others call them victims. Because the people who don’t stay the same, the ones that change…they’re changing fast. And they’re turning out to be scary as fuck.

                Dean Winchester isn’t one of the ones who’ve changed. He woke up the morning after the Rapture the same Dean he’d always been. It took him a while to realize that anything was wrong at all, that his neighbors were suspiciously silent, that the smoke he smelled wasn’t coming from a fireplace but from a burning house a few streets over. He turned on the television and saw the news, and the first thing he did was to call his folks. No answer. So he went there to check on them.

                In retrospect, Dean figures it’s probably a good thing that Mary and John went together. His parents were the very definition of codependent, and they were some of the lucky few who just…vanished. No signs left, nothing out of place in the house—they were just gone. It took Dean a while to come to grips with the fact that he’d never know what happened to them, that the police weren’t going to look because they had bigger problems to deal with, that there wouldn’t _be_ an organized police force for much longer. Chaos reigned. Looting and vandalism, murder and prophesying, the first hints of changes in the populace. No more electricity, no running water, more and more wandering gangs and static factionalism. Dean carries his father’s old Colt pistol with him wherever he goes, and eventually he stops feeling bad about using it.

                Once things calm down a bit, the national superstructure is gone. There’s no internet, no cellphones, no technology that can help. It’s every man, woman and child for themselves, and once Dean has a handle on his grief and anger, he knows what he has to do. He’s gotta go find Sammy. Smart Sammy, Stanford Sammy, who hasn’t been back to Lawrence in all of his undergraduate years, who has a pretty girlfriend named Jess that Dean has talked with over Skype a few times. Her family lives in California. If they’ve survived, then Sam will be with them. He certainly wouldn’t bother coming back to Kansas, not because he doesn’t love his family, Dean knows that, just because he has…different priorities.

                Dean’s own priorities have changed over the months. He’s learned by trial and error that, since you really can’t tell if people are in the middle of a change or not, it’s better to trust no one. Some of the afflicted can’t handle salt, some are beginning to develop an allergy to silver, some have strange hungers and stranger ways of fulfilling them… They’re self-isolating, for the most part, and human communities are starting to actively test for these people, to keep them away from the “witnesses.” If it’s someone’s family member who’s changing, it’s a tragedy. There’s a couple in town whose eleven-year old started levitating in the middle of Sunday service. She didn’t make it out of the church, and in the end neither did her parents.

Try to protect someone else’s secret and you can be punished, kicked out of the group or forced to kill the same person you want to protect. Try to hide your own change, and when you’re found out you won’t get the chance to run because they’ll kill you first. It’s a brutal necessity, people say. Gotta keep the witnesses pure. Gotta keep the righteous clean.

                Dean isn’t changing but he sure doesn’t feel righteous, and he doesn’t want to stay in Kansas with a bunch of heartless jackasses either. It’s time to go, and he packs his Impala up with guns, gas and food and drives off without looking back. He’s got one goal in mind: make it to California. Sam’s the only family he’s got left. He’s got to make sure Sam’s okay. He’s got to protect his little brother. Dean isn’t military but his dad was, and Dean grew up learning how to handle himself, how to shoot and how to fight, how to hunt and track whenever they got together with Uncle Bobby, a friend of his dad’s from way back.

Sam learned it all too, but he didn’t take to it the way Dean did. He might not be able to kill someone in order to protect himself. If he can’t, then Dean can shoulder that burden for him. It’s probably all he can do for Sam at this point, honestly, the kid’s never wanted to lean on him for anything, not even when Dean offers to help. Maybe he tried to call, maybe he tried to reach out and couldn’t… Dean steps harder on the gas.

                Being on the road is way different than the commune back home had been, though. There are abandoned cars everywhere. In places the asphalt has been destroyed, necessitating backtracking, and in some places there are barriers set up. The first asshole who tries to bully a toll out of Dean, Dean punches him in the face. The second one tries to convince him at the point of a knife, and Dean manages to shoot him but gets tagged across the arm. It’s hard work, stitching yourself up in the middle of fucking nowhere with a sewing kit definitely not meant for human flesh. It’s harder to realize that, yeah, shit has really become all Road Warrior and the best defense? It’s gonna be a good offense.

                Dean does his best to tamp down on all the empathy in him, that urgent desire to care, to _do something_ that had him bringing wounded animals home to his mom as a kid, or fighting with bigger boys who tried to pick on his friends. He can’t let that out now, because it’s the next best thing to a death sentence in this lawless land. All he can do is fight for himself, keep his guns clean and ammo well stocked, and set up a shit-ton of defenses every time he risks going to sleep.

                He makes it from eastern Kansas down into Oklahoma, following the bigger roads because they’re harder to close off, harder to lure people into traps on. He’s hardly over the border before he’s convinced he’s made a mistake. Right there in the middle of the road, jutting up from a pile of charred cars, is an enormous cross that bears the words “THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE”. Tied to the cross, with everything from barbed wire to what looks like climbing rope, are at least five different people. They aren’t moving. They’re probably dead—oh, fuck, Dean hopes that they’re dead. They’re baking in the midday sun, and a nearby billboard that used to show an ad for auto insurance now reads, “THIS IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD’S WRATH ON EARTH!”

                That, Dean has to admit to himself, looks like a pretty fucking apt description. Wrath and ruin, laid out right in front of him. He’s never been really religious, but he’s pretty sure that an awful lot of the Bible has been ignored with this tableau. He also knows he can’t do anything about it, so he grits his teeth, rolls up his window and edges around the murder scene.

                It doesn’t get any easier. Every few miles there are new crosses, new bodies. Some of the people were definitely in the midst of a chance of some kind, their bodies morphed into something other than human. Others look perfectly normal, and Dean wonders if their only flaw was accidentally levitating too. He sees living people every now and then but no one tries to stop him, and only one person fires on the car before Dean hauls out his recently acquired Mk-48 machine gun and fires a few salvos into the tall grass. The gunfire dies off and he continues on his way, more cautious than ever.

                The thing is…the thing is, Dean gets it. He totally gets it. He understands the fear that’s coursing through people right now, he gets how fucking scary this is. You think he doesn’t wake up with nightmares? You think he doesn’t wonder about whether or not he’s gonna make it to Sam, or if there’s even going to be a Sam to make it to once he gets there? It scares the shit out of him. And he’s felt it, camped in his car with the doors lined with salt; he’s felt the weight of eyes in the darkness looking at him, assessing his defenses. One time something actually landed on his roof, started scritch-scratching. Dean took his Colt, now only loaded with special rounds that have a silver alloy coating, and fired up through the metal at it. It hurt him to wound his baby, but hearing the screech that erupted from the creature as it fell from the top of his car and scuttled away into the night was damn satisfying.

                So yeah, he gets the panic. He gets the rage. He even understands needing to look to something beyond yourself for answers, and how natural it must be for most people to fall back on religion. Fine, yeah, do that. But he doesn’t, and this will be true for as long as he lives, he _does not_ understand why you have to strap these poor fuckers to the symbol of your supposed faith, like you’re parodying your own lord’s death, and put them on display. He doesn’t get that, and every cross he passes makes him angrier. The one he sees on day three, after a few hundred miles of careful maneuvering and precautions, is the one that finally breaks him. Because the guy hanging up there, wrapped with iron chains and head hanging low, is still alive. He’s _breathing_.

                Dean feels the fury finally overflow. He stops the car, leaving her running, grabs his Colt and a Bowie knife he’s gotten pretty good with, and heads over to the cross. He can’t see anyone but that doesn’t mean people are watching, aren’t _witnessing_ this. Well, fucking fine. Let them witness it.

                “Hey, buddy.” Dean reaches up and slaps the guy’s cheek gently. “You awake? C’mon man, you’re gonna have to help me out here. I can get you down but I can’t carry you to my car.” This guy has a little height and a lot of breadth on him, his clothes filthy, brown beard gummed up on one side with blood. For a moment Dean thinks he’s just too late, and then the man opens his eyes. They’re a stormy grey-blue, and when they finally connect with Dean’s he’s so relieved he forgets to breathe for a moment. “Hey there. I’m gonna get you down from here, okay?”

                “Nnn…”

                “Save it, getting you out of these chains is gonna be the easy part.” Dean clambers up onto the base of the cross—they used a goddamn classic 1965 Mustang Fastback, impaled it right now the middle, what kind of savages are these people—and uses his knife to pry up the nails holding the chains in place. He’s lucky, Dean supposes with a grimace, that the assholes didn’t drive the nails right through this guy’s hands. He gets one arm free and the guy falls forward with a groan.

                “Whoa, no, hey!” Dean pushes back on his chest, helping to keep him upright. “No, c’mon now, you’ve got to keep your feet, otherwise you’re gonna dislocate your own shoulder.”

                “Be…be…hind…you…”

                “What?”

                That’s when the bullet hits Dean square in the middle of the back. The pain of it snaps his spine backwards, arching him so hard that he topples over, hits the filthy pavement with a hoarse, shocked exhalation. A moment later a man appears over him, pale skin, gaunt face and a manic look in his eyes. “Look at this,” the man says with a whistle. “Some godless dumbass tryin’ to save one of the damned. And you’re alive! Hey, Gordon!” he yells over his shoulder. “He’s still alive!”

                “Put another one between his eyes then, Kubrick,” the unseen man calls back, and Dean’s shooter grins like a little kid.

                “If you’re human,” he says with a hint of compassion as he points his gun, “then this ain’t gonna hurt. May God forgive you for your sins in this world.”

                “Save it for yourself,” Dean wheezes, and an instant later he swings his Colt up to bear and shoots the man in the face. His attacker collapses and Dean forces himself to his feet, firing toward the second man who’s looking with interest in his car. The guy retreats, and Dean makes quick work of undoing the other set of chains, grimacing all the while. Thank fuck he never takes the bulletproof vest off, Jesus Christ.

                Once he’s free the man doesn’t quite collapse, and Dean manages to get him into his car before he hears the other guy coming back, with what sounds like reinforcements. He shuts his door just as the bullets start to fly, and a second later Baby’s rear windshield is cracked and he’s barely avoided another shot. He puts the car in gear and floors it, and then they’re peeling away from the carnage, the site of this poor guy’s crucifixion and the bloody corpse that Dean left behind.

                The guy doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move, eyes closed as he leans his bloody head against the window, and Dean knows he needs to stop and get this poor fool cleaned up, fuck, he’s probably dying of heat stroke or something and soon all Dean’s gonna be left with is a body. They’re still too close to the scene of the crime, though, it’s not safe, and so Dean drives like a maniac and keeps going for another hour, then guides Baby off to the side of the road and around behind an abandoned gas station. It’s starting to get dark; in a little while they’ll be safe from casual observers as long as they keep their light down.

                Dean turns off the car and touches the man on the shoulder. “Hey. You alive?”

                “Nah.”

                He smiled despite himself. “Glad to hear it. Open your eyes, man, wakey wakey. We’ve got to take care of your face before it’s too dark to see.”

                “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my face,” the man says, his voice a soft drawl that’s pleasant on the ears, a little different than anything Dean’s every heard before.

                “Except for all the blood on it. What’d you do to rile them up so bad, huh?”

                Dean can tell it’s the wrong question almost the moment he asks it; the guy’s jaw tightens a little, and his bloodshot eyes go distant. Fuck him, he should know better than that. “Never mind, not important,” he amends. “Think you can stand? I’ve got some water in the back that’s not potable, but it’s decent for washing.”

                “I can try,” the guy says, but before Dean can get out of the front seat he holds out his hand. For all the abuse the guy has taken, his hand doesn’t waver. “I’m Benny. Benny Lafitte, and I owe you big.”

                “Benny Lafitte, huh.” Dean takes his hand and shakes it. “I’m Dean Winchester, also known as your knight in shining armor.”

                “I can see that,” Benny says with a little chuckle, and it’s strange how just the sound of it warms Dean’s chest a bit.

                “No more delays, man. Up and out.” Dean heads to the trunk and opens it up, reaching for one of the gas canisters that he used up two days ago, refilling it with water from a well in the middle of nowhere that had once been a tourist attraction, a cutesy “wishing well.” Dean wonders if the thing actually grants wishes now; seems like anything is possible in this fucked up new world.

                He grabs one of his precious bottles of drinking water as well, then hauls the container out and around to the other side of the car, where Benny’s opened up the door and managed to get to his feet, even if he does have to lean against Baby to keep ‘em. “Drink,” he says, popping the cap and handing it to Benny. He sips it carefully, then downs in in one long flood when the thirst suddenly seems to catch up to him. “Good, huh?”

“Ain’t nothin’ like water when you’re dry as a bone,” Benny replies. He stares at the empty bottle pensively. “Nothin’ better than the water for when your cares get too heavy.”

There’s some sort of story there, but Benny is still a bloody mess and now isn’t the time. “Sit, I’ll get your face,” Dean says, and Benny obliges with a grateful sigh. Dean grabs a rag out of the back seat and wets it down, then lifts it to Benny’s face. “Any wounds here I should know about that I can’t see?”

                “Gotta be something there, but I don’t remember what it was, exactly,” Benny says with a sigh. “That was the shot that knocked me out, I think.”

                “I can believe that.” Dean wipes away the blood carefully, soaking the rag and holding it to the places where it’s gone hard and crusty in Benny’s hair. No need to yank and pull on it if he doesn’t need to. He keeps at it, as gentle as he can be, and Benny doesn’t say a word, just shuts his eyes and hums under his breath. By the time Dean’s cleaned off his face he can see the wound, a cut across the top of his forehead. It doesn’t look big enough to have bled the way it did, but head wounds are tricky that way. He gets a bandage out of one of his first aid kits, pre-juiced with antibacterial gel, and lays it down over the cut. “There.”

                “Thanks,” Benny says, and his voice is hoarse. “You a medic?”

                “Just a first responder. It’s not too hard to patch up little things like this, though. Anything else I can help you with?”

“I think that’s it, actually.” Benny smiles a little, but it’s a pained thing. “They wanted me to around to suffer for a while, not bleed out and ruin all their fun too fast.” It’s honest and it’s painful and Dean doesn’t know what to do with that, so he changes the subject instead, backing off and handing over the rag.

“There’s no way any of my pants’ll fit you, but I’ve got a fresh shirt you can put on. No water to spare right now for washing yours, sorry.”

                “It’s no problem, brother. Got no one around to offend with my stink but you anyhow.”

                It jars Dean a little, to hear the word “brother” come out of this near-stranger’s mouth with such ease. He can’t even remember the last time Sam has said that to him. He says his name, sure, but rarely that. Not even when he introduced him to someone out in California.

Dean turns and starts rummaging through his backseat for the duffel full of clothes, pointedly ignoring Benny as he strips off his shirt, stares at it for a moment, then drops it on the ground and goes for the water like he’s ready to get baptized, enthusiastic but still a little cautious. He refreshes the rag every few minutes, wringing it carefully each time, and wipes down his whole body. When he shucks his pants off to do the bottom half, Dean feels his face light up red even though it’s too far into twilight for Benny to make it out, at this point. He grabs an oversized flannel shirt and puts in on top of the car.

                “That’s for you. I’m gonna set up a salt ring,” Dean says, grabs his rapidly-dwindling bag and heads around to the other side of the car to start there. Thin but solid, just enough salt to make it stay…fuck, he hopes there’s no breeze tonight. It would be safer to set up inside the attached garage, but he doesn’t trust enclosed spaces like that anymore. On the road, there’s always a way to escape. Baby is more reliable than anyone he’s met since this shit show began, all things considered.

                By the time he works his way around to Benny the man is fully dressed, but his feet are bare. Dean frowns. “Were you wearing shoes when I found you?”

                Benny shakes his head. “Good boots’re worth too much to leave on a corpse these days.”

                “Well, shit. I don’t think we’re the same size for that.”

                “It doesn’t bother me, Dean.”

                “Well, it’s gonna bother me if something happens and we have to hoof it, and then I’ve got to carry you again.” Dean grins and reaches into his back seat again. “Ha, I knew I kept these for a reason. Here.” He hands over a pair of huge, shapeless black sandals with a very thin foam thong for the toes.

                “The hell are these?”

                “I pulled ‘em out of a spa I passed about a week ago.” Dean doesn’t have to be able to see Benny’s expression to feel the judgment going on. “Plenty of stuff in a place like that that people will trade for, plus it never hurts to have another pair of shoes handy.”

                “I’m grateful for what I can get, at this point.” Benny puts them on without another word, then sits down again and watches Dean finish the salt circle. He waits for Dean to put his supplies away, start reaching for a can of whatever’s left in the box to be dinner before he asks, “Why’d you do it? Why’d you help me?”

                Dean has been expecting this question, so he’s not caught quite as off-guard as he could be. Still, it’s unexpectedly hard to muster the words to his lips. “You didn’t deserve that.”

                “I coulda been a monster.”

                “And you still wouldn’t have deserved that!” Dean snaps. “I swear to whatever is out there, the most atrocities I’ve seen by _far_ since the Rapture rolled through were done at the hands of regular old people to anyone they thought might be different. It’s sick and I’m not gonna help with that. Least I could do, the absolute _least_ , was spare you from dying of dehydration for someone’s sick, self-righteous fantasy.” He’s breathing fast, too fast, getting righteous with the wrong man, and Dean forces himself to reel it back in. “Now.” He clears his throat and reaches into the box. “You want creamed corn or baked beans for dinner?”

                Benny stares at Dean for a moment like he can’t quite see him, can’t understand the words coming out of his mouth, before he starts to laugh. It’s a weak thing, barely a chuckle, but Dean has the feeling that this guy hasn’t had anything to laugh about in far too long. “Corn,” he says at last. “You don’t wanna be in a closed space with me after a can of beans.”

                “Very thoughtful of you.” He opens the can, grabs some plastic spoons and they pass the can back and forth. Dean’s learned to deal with the hunger that comes from living this way, never getting full but never quite tipping over the edge into starvation. It’s no way to do things for the long haul, and he’s going to run out a lot faster with someone like Benny along to feed as well, but he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it. They finish it off, he washes it clean and then they set up to sleep.

                It’s not comfortable for one, and it’s downright cramped for two, but they manage to find marginally flat spaces in Baby on top of the boxes and bags to lie down on. It’s nighttime now but the moon is full, the air redolent with silvery light and the distant howl of something that sounds an awful lot like a wolf. Both of them are tired, but neither of them are sleeping yet.

                “You don’t want to ask?” Benny offers at last. “Why I was strung up?”

                Dean sighs. “I’m not gonna drag you through that mud again. You want to talk, talk, and I’ll listen. You don’t, don’t.”

                Benny shook his head. “You’re a rare person nowadays, Dean Winchester.”

                “Nothin’ rare about me.”

                “Yes there is. You don’t know me, got no reason to trust me. No one else would have risked themselves pulling me down from there.”

                Dean likes to think that isn’t true, he likes to think that his family, his father, would have been that kind of person. His dad had strong morals, he didn’t let them get away with doing the wrong things as kids. Surely that would carry over. But then Dean remembers how insular John could be, how little he cared about the world outside of his family circle, and Dean knows that if John had been in the driver’s seat, he’d have kept right on driving.

                “I’m nothing special,” he settled on at last. “And hey, you were on my way.”

                “Where are you heading?”

                “California.” That’s as specific as he wants to get for now, but he can afford to give a little more away. Dean can handle being alone all right, but he’s missed the sound of other people’s voices. Hell, he’s missed the sound of his own. It just doesn’t seem right, to sing along with his cassettes when he’s driving through hell. “My kid brother’s in school out there.”

                “Yeah?”

                “Yeah, he’s wicked smart. He’s going to be a lawyer.” _Was_. Was going to be a lawyer. “He’s all I’ve really got left now. My folks vanished back at the beginning of all this.”

                “’m sorry about that.” And the thing is, Dean can tell that Benny really _is_ sorry about that; it’s not just a platitude. This guy has lost someone, someone he loves, and his sorrow surrounds him like a mist, hard to see through all the pain that’s been done to him but there nevertheless.

                “It’s all right. I don’t think my mom would’ve cared much for no hot showers anyway.” And it’s stupid and trite and an awful thing to say, but Benny chuckles again.

                “I hear ya. My girl didn’t like that part either.” Dean doesn’t speak, and a moment later Benny continues. “I ran a fishing boat in Louisiana, but we were up visitin’ her folks in Colorado when the Rapture hit. It was bad there, man, lots more creatures coming out of the woodwork, lots more people transforming. Lots of killing. Her family…they didn’t last long. We headed south but got caught about a hundred miles from here, by some bloodsucking freaky-fuck vampires.”

                “Vampires?” Dean hasn’t run into those yet. Unless… “The ones that start off with a silver allergy?”

                “That’s them.”

                “Holy shit.” He’s kind of surprised, actually. “The place I’m from, they killed or ran off anyone who started to show signs of a change before they could really manifest as anything.”

                “Well it must have been the other way around for these boys. They were led by someone called himself the _Old Man_. Had a crew, said he’d either kill us or turn us. I told him to kill us, then.” Benny’s mouth twists in the moonlight. “My girl though, she opted to be turned. He made me watch ‘em do it, and the way they did…it’s faster, when you’re in direct contact with their blood. And Andrea…”

                _Stop_ , Dean wants to say as Benny’s throat closes and his words choke off. _Stop, you don’t have to say it, you don’t have to tell me. Save it, don’t hurt yourself any worse._ But maybe it would hurt worse to stop now, because Benny keeps going. “Andrea didn’t know me, after. Nothing but hunger in her. They turned me loose, told me to run. Said they were going to let her hunt me. I ran…and she didn’t find me.” He shakes his head. “Or they never let ‘er go at all, maybe… The next day, I got caught again by these boys. Hunters, they said. I told ‘em what had happened, thought they might help me, but the one who runs the group, the one you didn’t kill…he said I was only fit for bait.”

                There are all sorts of things that Dean wants to say, all sorts of things he feels he should, but what he settles on in the end is, “Well, damn. Now I wish I’d shot him through the head too.”

                “I appreciate the sentiment, but I’d just as soon never see ‘im again,” Benny says, but he sounds a little lighter than he did before.

                “Fine, but I reserve the right to turn this car around and kick some ass if you start to get mopey.”

                “Mopey?” The smile’s back in Benny’s voice now, and Dean breathes a silent breath of relief that he hasn’t fucked this whole interaction up.

                “Yeah, mopey. Or existential, shit, the only thing worse than an existential crisis is a religious revelation.”

                “I’ll try not to burden you with either.”

                “Good.” And Dean feels good, too, it’s not just a saying right now. He actually feels better himself. Maybe he was getting too used to being alone, before this. And yeah, Benny’s got a point, Dean doesn’t know him from Adam, but he wants to. He actually wants to. “Sleep well, man.”

                “Well as I can on a 60-roll pack of toilet paper, brother.”

                “Hey, that stuff’s like solid gold in the right circles,” Dean says, already sleepy. “Shoulda stockpiled it, I’d have made a fortune selling it now.” He falls asleep thinking about selling toilet paper out of his dad’s garage and dreams about fluffy, cottony monsters that fall to pieces at the first touch of a machete. It’s a good dream.

                The night passes without any trouble, and the next day they head out together. Benny eats surprisingly little for a guy his size, citing stomach trouble. Dean gets it; he’s had a bout with giardia himself in the past few months, and he wasn’t the one strung up in the sun for god knows how long only yesterday. He makes sure Benny drinks some water and doesn’t have to be sick (because new buddy or no, nobody gets away with puking in Baby), then starts driving again.

The going is still slow but the trip is way nicer now, because Benny’s actually real good company. He’s the one to suggest they play some more of Dean’s tapes and picks AC/DC to start things off, which is a big fucking plus in Dean’s book. He’s not loud, or angry in the intense, visceral way that Dean knows he falls prey to sometimes. Benny ain’t exactly up to his ass in sunshine and flowers either, but he tells a good story, and for a while with him Dean can almost pretend that it isn’t the Rapture, the end of the world—at least the end of the world they’ve always known—and instead is just a road trip with an unexpected friend who likes to torture Dean with descriptions of Southern food.

“Swear to God or whatever, you don’t shut up about biscuits and gravy and I will beat your ass,” Dean groans as they make camp two evenings later on their way through the Oklahoma panhandle. They’ve both decided to avoid stepping foot in any part of Texas: if Oklahoma is scary, one can only imagine what _that_ state’s done to itself since this all began. New Mexico’s gotta be a safer bet.

“Ah’m just sayin’, there’s nothing that can beat a good red eye gravy over fresh ham, or maybe a nice thick slice of roast beef…”

“Do you want me to gag you? ‘Cause I like talking to you but if you don’t shut up I will _break_.”

And because Benny’s an asshole, he grins and says, “But I ain’t even gotten started on the pie yet.”

                “Son of a bitch.” Dean rests his head back against the wheel well; they’re sitting outside of Baby, protected by the standard circle of salt and watching the sun go down. “You’re a sadist. You missed your calling, man, you could have made a killing as a dom.”

                “Fifty Shades of Southern Cuisine,” Benny agrees. Dean laughs, but his chuckles are cut off when Benny suddenly turns his head to the left, face going still. “Quiet,” Benny murmurs. “Something’s comin’.”

                “What?” Dean sits up and looks around, but he can’t see anything. “How do you know?”

                “I can…hear ‘em. Something’s not right…” He gets to his feet and Dean follows suit, grabs the shotgun out of the back seat because the rifle’s a bitch to handle in the dark, and makes sure Benny has a weapon on hand. It’s another few seconds before he can hear anything himself, but then there are two figures stepping out of the trees about a dozen yards away. They’re…well, they look human. They’re absolutely filthy, covered in dirt and what looks like dried blood all over their hands, and there’s more where that came from around their mouth.

                “Oh, fuck,” Dean mutters. “This ain’t good. Vampires?”

                “Don’t think so. They’re something different.”

                “Great.” The newcomers are heading toward the car, matching grins on their faces. “You think the salt will stop ‘em?”

                “I wouldn’t count on it,” Benny says, and then raises the Colt and fires at one of the creatures. It takes the bullet to the chest with a frown, but that doesn’t stop it. Not even close.

                “ _Fuck_.” Dean fires off a blast with the shotgun to the other one’s gut, knocking it back a step and leaving a gory mess behind, but it doesn’t stop it either. By this time the creatures are running, and the gun’s about to become no better than a bludgeon. Dean exchanges the shotgun for a black machete he traded a carton of cigarettes for back in Lawrence and ducks under the first one’s grasping arms, rounds on it and chops down hard with the blade. It cuts through the creature’s arm, making it shriek but not stopping it.

                “You’re gonna be my next body,” the thing tells him with a horrible smile. “I’ll eat you and then I’ll _be_ you. Pretty face like that,” it lunges again, grabbing on to Dean’s sleeve and it’s _strong_ , he barely pulls away before it can reel him in, “it’ll make my next meal so much easier to lure.”

                “Not enough dead,” the other one hisses from where it’s going after Benny. “Not enough dead anymore.”

                “How’s this for dead?” Dean grunts as he brings the obsidian-sharp blade across the creature’s throat. It’s strong, this thing, but it’s not very good at protecting itself. Its neck opens up with a wave of dark, clotted blood, and it wraps both its gritty hands around its throat like it can stem the tide somehow. One more chop and it loses its head completely, and Dean turns back to help Benny out just in time to see Benny’s opponent impaled on the end of a Bowie knife, leaning in close and whispering to Benny with a smile on its face. Dean can’t hear what it’s saying but Benny looks stunned, almost sick and that ain’t right. It takes Dean three paces and a decent backhand slash to decapitate the fucker. Its body falls off the knife onto the ground, twitches there for a few moments before settling into an unnaturally fast rigor, just like the other one.

                Dean nudges it with his toe, resolutely not looking at Benny, not seeing the way his eyes have gotta still be huge, the look of shock on his face. “What the hell are these things, you think? If not vampires, I mean.”

                “Some kinda ghoul, I guess,” Benny says after a moment. “ _Of ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us._ It’s a prayer,” he adds when Dean looks at him curiously. “One my mama used to say when I got scared at night. Haven’t thought of that in a long time,” he murmurs.

                “Sounds like the only prayer worth saying, these days.” Dean wipes his blade off on the ghoul’s shirt. “Hey…think either of their shoes would fit you?”

                He’s joking, of course, but the look of sheer horror he gets from Benny is enough to start him laughing, the tension and adrenaline from the fight channeling through his diaphragm, up his lungs and out his throat. Dean laughs like it’s the funniest thing ever said, like he’s George Carlin and Kurt Vonnegut wrapped into one, and when Benny joins in it gets even worse.

Dean sinks down to the ground, still holding the machete, puts one hand over his eyes and laughs and laughs, because how it this his life? He was supposed to marry a pretty girl, take over the family garage and brag about his super-smart little brother for the rest of his life. Instead he’s road-tripping with a guy who was literally crucified less than a week ago, running from everything he’s ever known toward the only thing he’s sure of and trying desperately not to cry about the fact that he’s just killed a thing that was going to eat him. _Eat him_ , fuck, like they’re on an African safari and he’s a gazelle in the middle of a pack of lions, fuck fuck _fuck_ …

                He doesn’t realize he’s saying that out loud until Benny’s arm is around his shoulders, and his voice, soft and soothing, is saying, “It’s okay, brother, it’s all right. You’re fine. You’re here, you’re fine, you’re gonna be okay.” And maybe it’s not manly and maybe it’s not what his dad would do—scratch that, it’s _definitely_ not what his dad would do, but Dean can’t care about that right now—but Dean leans his head on Benny’s shoulder, turns his face into his neck and breathes deep, shuddering breaths in and out, in and out, in…and…out. Until finally he can breathe softly again, and when he raises his eyes there’s no judgment in Benny’s face, just a strange look Dean can’t quite parse out.

                “We probably shouldn’t stay here,” Benny says. “How about you let me drive until we find a better place to camp?”

                “Okay,” Dean says, barely recognizing his own voice. He lets Benny help him up, marvels at how nice it is to actually have someone help _him_ for once. Not that Dean needs it, no sir, he’s been making his way just fine, these aren’t his first kills since the Rapture began, but he never cared so much about them before. “I’m kind of fucked up right now,” he adds without knowing why, but Benny smiles at him like he understands.

                “I hear ya,” Benny says, and Dean knows that he really, really does. “C’mon, let’s get going.”

                Dean falls asleep in the passenger seat to the comforting hum of Baby’s engine, and doesn’t wake up until dawn.

               

***

 

                New Mexico is a different breed of trouble than Oklahoma. There are long stretches of uninterrupted road, which is a beautiful thing, but where there’s trouble it’s _major_. Whole towns have caught fire and burnt in the flames of change, nothing left in some places but twisted spires of metal that used to be streetlamps, covered in an inch’s worth of ash. Where there’s tags, they’re of the same religious vein as Dean’s familiar with, but here it’s all one message: GODS COUNTRY. Burnt into the ground, into the sides of mountains, burnt into the very fabric of the land: GODS COUNTRY.

                “The hell do you think that means?” Dean asks quietly not far out of Albuquerque, which was…just something to be avoided. They’d taken the desert route around that husk of a city, and Dean is pretty sure he saw a chupacabra at one point, but it might have just been a coyote with mange. He’s trying to be distracting, because Benny’s gotten quiet over these past few days, eating less than ever, looking wan and sick like some Gothic heroine, and it makes Dean nervous. He doesn’t want to lose Benny, but he doesn’t know what to do to make him better. If he’s got an infection they’re fucked, because the rudimentary first aid kit of Dean’s has no antibiotics and that’s not the sort of shit he’s got enough on him to trade for.

                “Not sure,” Benny says with a grimace, shielding his eyes from the sunshine. “Guess somebody’s got a hard-on for God here.”

                “Or God really does have a hard-on for the desert,” Dean mutters. He knows it’s not smart, it’s not the way to make good time but he’s gonna pull over the next shady spot he finds, because the sun’s getting to Benny today and that probably means he’s got a migraine or something and just won’t say anything because he’s a self-sacrificing little bitch. Dean drives and finally settles for a spot in a grove of trees not too far off the road, a pretty place colored bright yellow from pine pollen, and Dean has never been so happy before that allergies aren’t his thing.

                They aren’t the first people to find this place, as it happens. After Dean pulls in and gets the lay of the land, he sees a man lying face-down on a picnic table not ten feet away. He’s alone, and maybe dead for all Dean can tell. He’s wearing a suit, though, and a battered trench coat, and it’s just weird enough that Dean doesn’t shoot the body before getting out of the car and approaching it cautiously.

                “Dean—”

                “I got this, Benny, you stay in the car,” Dean calls out, pumping his shotgun with one hand while he tightens his grip on the machete with his other. If this is some sort of sick trap, a lure of some kind, well, he’s as prepared as he’s gonna be, and he can’t just leave a body on a picnic table. Dean draws close and gingerly pokes at it with the dull side of the machete’s tip. “Hey. You alive?” No movement. “Hey!” Dean pokes it again. “Either you’re alive or I’m gonna push this table over with you on it, got it?”

                “That,” a rusty-sounding voice suddenly says, “would be very rude.” The body’s head turns to look toward Dean with the brightest blue eyes he’s ever seen. “I am not dead.”

                Dean is vaguely aware of the car door slamming behind him, but he’s mostly captivated with the fact that this guy who’s slowly sitting up looks like some kind of goddamn tax accountant, in his ill-fitting suit and overlarge coat. “Okay,” Dean says as gently as he can. “Great, that’s great. How are you, now that we all know you’re not dead?”

                The guy considers the question for a moment. “Achy,” he says at last. “It was a long fall.”

                “Fall?” Dean glances up at the trees. None of them look big enough to support this guy’s weight. “Where’d you fall from?”

                “Very high up.” The guy pushes to his hands and knees and Dean lets him, not sure if he wants to get too close yet. “But I should be well enough to fly again soon.”

                “Even better.” This person is clearly nuts, lost his mind from the heat and the barren landscape and all the other fucking things that could drive a person crazy nowadays. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay. I’m just gonna go now—”

                “Wait!” The man holds up a trembling hand. “My Father would not bring you to me if you were not important. Are you a Vessel?”

                “Am I a…what?”

                “A Vessel? Are you one of those men who will embody an archangel at the end of days and fight in the final battle for the fate of the world?”

                “Whoa, dude.” Dean puts his hands up and backs slowly toward the car. “I can tell you right now, I’m nothing like that. I’m just me, okay? Good ol’ Teddy Nugent, and I’ll be going now—”

                “That is not your name,” the man said dryly. “That name feels vile, and unsuited for you. Why would you give me a false name?”

                Dean decides to opt for a little honesty. “Well, dude, look at this from my perspective. Strange guy in the middle of nowhere tells me I’m a freaking Vessel and wants my personal info, I’m not about to give it to him.”

                The guy’s head tilts quizzically, like some sort of bird. “I see what you mean. I must build a relationship of trust between us.” He gets unsteadily to his feet and walks over. Dean, dumbstruck, lets him. “I am Castiel. Angel of Temperance and Thursdays.”

                “Guess that answers why we met noe,” Dean says nonsensically. “Since I think it’s a Thursday.” The guy smiles and offers his hand, and Dean thinks _fuck it_ and goes ahead and shakes. “Dean Winchester, regular joe from Kansas, not a Vessel, not an angel, nothing freaky. Just me.”

                “I doubt that very sincerely, Dean Winchester.”

                “Yeah, well.” Dean shrugs. “Look, nice to meet you, but I’ve got to get my friend in the shade before he burns up, so…yeah. Gotta go.”

                “I feel the power of the Lord suffusing me,” Castiel tells him sincerely. “Clearly I have fulfilled my Father’s wishes by making contact with you, Dean Winchester. Now I will go and search for my brethren, but if you need my assistance you have only to pray.”

                “Great.” That would happen on a cold day in Hell. “Thanks. Now really, my friend’s sick, so I’ve gotta—”

                “He isn’t sick, Dean Winchester.”

                Dean frowns. “Of course he is, just look at him.”

                Castiel shakes his head. “He isn’t sick. He’s simply _changing_.”

                Dean swallows hard. “Changing into what?”

                Castiel looks beyond him toward the car. “I believe,” he says in a tone approaching kindness, “that he already knows. Farewell, Dean Winchester.” There’s a sudden crack of noise, a spreading of feathery darkness across the sky—almost like enormous _wings_ —and then they’re gone and so is Castiel, nothing left behind but the imprint of his shoes’ soles on the dusty ground. Dean stares at the spot where, apparently, the Angel of Motherfucking Thursdays just stood and had a conversation with him, then snaps out of it and actually remembers why his skin is really crawling right now.

                He turns and walks back to the car. Benny’s awake, but he won’t meet Dean’s eyes. “So,” he starts, then stops, his voice trailing off uncertainly.

                “So,” Dean says grimly, and he suddenly decides that, you know what, he’s not going to have this conversation right now. He’s just not. He gets back in the car and starts the engine. Benny stares at him in confusion.

                “Dean—”

                “Not now,” he snaps, and then because he’s not an idiot and he fucking _knows_ the symptoms as well as Benny probably does, he’s just way better at deluding himself than he ever knew, he grabs a blanket from the back and throws it at Benny. “Put that on.”

                “Dean.”

                “Put it the _fuck_ on.”

                He can tell Benny wants to argue, wants to say something stupid and noble and you know what, Dean doesn’t want to fucking hear it right now. He doesn’t want to hear how the only person in his life right now, the only one for hundreds of fucking miles that he can talk to, wants to be close to, whose life he saved and who saved his sanity right back, wants to be an idiot. In the end Benny doesn’t argue, and Dean floors it and heads for the nearest metropolis. Or fuck it, anywhere inhabited by assholes.

                They stop at the billboard indicating the town of Pinedale a little ways off Highway 48, one of the few towns that doesn’t seem to be black and crispy. This one, judging from the hellfire and damnation quotes on the billboard, has gone the Oklahoma way, and that’s just fine with Dean. It’s twilight, and Benny’s got the blanket off and has stopped wincing, so that’s good. He looks like shit, but at least Dean knows why now.

                “So, you’re turning into a vampire.”

                “Think so,” Benny agrees. His thick, strong fingers pick at the cloth of his pants and Dean just wants to grab his hand and hold onto it, keep it from trembling. “I saw how they did it to Andrea. Gave her some of the head honcho’s blood to drink; it went pretty quick from there. I didn’t think I got any of it in me, but I can’t be sure. Maybe just less of it, which is why this’s takin’ longer. Or maybe I was always gonna turn into one of these, I don’t know.”

                “So you need some blood, then.”

                “Dean, no.”

                “Yeah, because I’m not going to let you literally _starve_ to death next to me when there are plenty of people around who don’t deserve to be upright.”

                Benny shakes his head. “It ain’t our place to pick and choose like that, Dean.”

                “What the fuck do you call the three people you’ve seen me kill since we first met?”

                “Only one of those was a person, and he tried to kill you first. The other two were monsters.” Benny firms his jaw. “Like me. You managed them okay, though, so I know you can make it fast for me too.”

                Dean feels a strange mixture of angry and sick, both emotions battling for control of his stomach. “No. Fuck that.”

                “I want you to do it, Dean.”

                “I’m not gonna _kill_ you, you bastard!”

                “If you don’t, I might kill you! You think of that? Have you met a monster yet that you could actually get along with?” Benny demanded. “We ain’t meant to mix, Dean! I’m turning into a _vampire_ , and that means I need _blood._ And you’re okay with that?”

                “Not great with it, no,” Dean says stiffly. “But I’m worse with the idea of you dying, so. Let’s go find you some food.”

                “That’s why we’re here?” Benny points at the ominous town. “Dean…this is no kinda solution.”

                “No? You don’t think there’s anyone here that’ll be missed, do you?” Dean gets out of the car, grabs the Colt and starts walking into the town. “Hey! Anybody who can hear this, you should know that I think you’re a bunch of fucking cowards who hide behind the words of a God you never bothered to fuck around with before the world went to Hell! You’re all a lot of pussies, and I hope the Devil devours this town just like he did all your neighbors, and I’m gonna sit right here and do a bunch of black magic on your doorstep to try and convince him to come visit you, so you’d better do something about it!”

                “ _Dean!_ ” Benny is more than shocked, he’s angry now. He gets out of the car himself and comes after Dean, frustration clear as day in his face. “What the hell are you doing?”

                “Finding you a meal.”

                “Not gonna happen, Dean.”

                “I’m not killing you!” Dean hisses, poking his friend in the chest. Fuck that, Benny is more than his friend. He’s been his fucking _lifeline_ since Dean met him, and now he wants to leave him? “And I’m not letting you die. You don’t like this option? Fine.” Dean holsters the gun and pulls out his knife. It was a gift he gave his dad last year for Christmas, a tactical folder with a wicked sharp edge. “We’ll do it like this instead.”

                “Dean, _no—_ ” But it’s too late, Dean has already cut the back of his left arm—carefully, because he doesn’t want to really hurt himself, but deep enough that the blood flows freely. He can smell it himself, hot and coppery, and as he watched Benny’s eyes go dark, and a truly freaky number of fangs descend into his mouth.   
                “Just be gentle,” Dean jokes, and yet Benny still has enough control to make himself turn away and start to walk, and Dean can’t have that, he _can’t_ , so he goes after him and grabs him, and drops of blood splash down onto the ground, and that’s when Benny breaks. He hauls Dean close, lifts his arm up and rubs his tongue over the cut, licks it until it’s clean, then follows the bloody trail down to Dean’s fingertips and slides each and every one into his mouth. And Dean…

                Dean is suddenly, _stupidly_ turned on. It’s been months since he’s gotten off with more than his own hand, and while he never advertised his preferences back in Lawrence he’s always batted for both teams. Benny is his friend and while he might be sporting a mouthful of fangs and drinking Dean’s blood, Dean can’t remember the last time he felt so safe. “It’s good,” he whispers. “It’s good, you’ve got me, it’s so good. Do you like it?” Benny’s eyes lift, and they’re practically on fire for Dean. “Do I taste good?”

                “Better than anything,” Benny says, and his voice is barely above a growl and it’s _ridiculous_ that it’s such a major turn-on for Dean. His arm is still bleeding a little sluggishly, and he flexes his fingers.

                “More?”

                “You want more?” Benny rasps, and Dean is sure they’re not just talking about the drinking.

                “Whatever you wanna give me,” Dean says, and the next thing he knows he’s in Benny’s arms, laid out on his back on Baby’s hood and Benny is licking his arm clean, then he goes for a kiss. Dean expects to be repulsed by the taste but it’s _bright_ , it’s so bright and beautiful and a fucking relief after days and days of nothing but canned vegetables and processed meat, and he wants to suck the flavor of it out of Benny’s mouth until there’s nothing left but Benny. Dean wraps his legs around Benny’s back and hauls him up closer, and their dicks are both so hard you could practically light a fire off of ‘em.

                “Oh, fuck,” Dean breathes, “fuck, oh fuck, touch me, fucking touch me.”

                “Well, since you asked so nice,” Benny says with a grin, and he undoes the button on Dean’s jeans, pulls down the zipper and has him out of his threadbare underwear in a moment. And then…he drops to his knees, pulls Dean forward so his ass is at the end of the hood, and fucking goes to town.

                The noises Dean makes don’t bear repeating but he can’t help it, because it’s been fucking forever since he’s gotten head anywhere near this good and the guy may be turning into a vampire but he still knows how to cover his teeth, and oh god, there’s no way Dean can last. He’s tensing up, every muscle going rigid as he throws his head back and clenches his jaw and fucking _comes_ , and Benny just swallows like it’s better than blood. Dean is barely aware when Benny straightens up and leans in again, jerks his pants down and ruts against Dean’s hip and oversensitive balls until he’s coming across Dean’s spent cock. It’s sticky and messy and gross, and Dean wants to do it again as soon as fucking possible.

                “The Lord will punish you!”

                “Fuck!” There goes the afterglow. Benny moves and Dean rucks up his pants, draws his gun and fires at the oncoming crowd. “Looks like they heard me then.”

                “I’d say so.” They get into Baby and Dean turns the key, doesn’t bother with turning around, just backs her out of there at top speed, bullets flying their way now. It’s stupid and exhilarating and ridiculous, and he’s laughing and Benny is too, and for the first time in a long time nothing matters but now. And now seems pretty damn good, all things considered.

 

***

 

                Even the best nows never last, though. Especially those ones, maybe, because you feel it so much harder when they end. The rest of the way through New Mexico, Arizona and most of Nevada, it’s just Dean and Benny and it’s good, it’s better than ever. Dean feels more alive, more vital and necessary than he’s ever been in his life.

                It isn’t that life wasn’t good before. Life was…well, it was what it was, Sunday dinners with Mom and Dad, days spent working in the garage and restoring classic cars in his spare time. It was occasional calls to Sam, listening to everything his brother did with a mixture of pride and envy. Dean never expected to be anything special, to do anything extraordinary with himself. All of those genes went to Sam and he’s never begrudged his little brother that, never, because Sammy is something special and Dean would be the first person to tell you that. But now…it’s like all those nights Dean spent staring at his ceiling, or sometimes at the sky when he just couldn’t stand to be inside anymore, feeling that weird mix of shame and yearning that there had to be _something_ more for him, if he could just figure out what. What he has now, fighting and fucking his way across the Southwest with a sense of purpose powering his days, it feels like he’s finally _living._

                The life is pretty amazing, too. They’re lucky, Dean recognizes that. No big groups have come after them since that first little adventure outside Pinedale, his blood is more than enough to satisfy Benny and not leave Dean any more than a little lightheaded for an hour or so, and the sex…he has never had sex like this before. Dean loves women, he does, and the men he’s had, as quiet and furtive as it all was back in Lawrence, were damn good but this is a whole other plane of awesome.

This sex is apple pie à la mode, a bottle of his favorite beer and the purr of a V8 all at once. This sex is Benny sucking Dean’s dick as he fingers him loose with the help of the bottle of Canola oil that Dean had packed without any firm plan for using it. This is Benny eating him out and then replacing his tongue with his cock, fucking Dean until he’s blind and deaf from the force of the blood surging through his head, until his toes go numb. This is Dean bending Benny over the trunk of the Impala and taking him hard and being begged for more in that soft Southern drawl that makes Dean equally desperate to please and to come. He pleases first—Dean’s a giver, he knows that about himself—and it’s even better for making himself wait, like a fucking riptide dragging him out to sea and drowning him in pleasure. It’s incredible, and the ease between them the rest of the time is so natural, so good that it doesn’t even feel like _being_ with someone else, just easy. Just right.

The next big city ruins things, though. Not that either of them haven’t been expecting something like this, but—

“They’re testing to get through,” Benny says somberly. It’s dusk out and he’s looking good, no more wincing and hiding his eyes with a pair of shades they pulled out of a Walmart three hundred miles back. Sure enough, the road into Bakersfield is blocked by what looks like military, and they’re stopping every car and making people get out. “No monsters allowed any further into California, I guess.”

“This is bullshit,” Dean fumes, his hands wrapped so tightly around Baby’s wheel that his knuckles have gone white. “They didn’t care in Vegas.”

“Vegas was a fuckin’ shit show, brother,” Benny chuckles. “What happens in Vegas is anarchy, I guess. We were lucky to get outta there in one piece.”

“Maybe,” Dean allows, “but that don’t make this right. We’ll find another way.”

“Dean.”

“No.”

“It won’t be for good,” Benny says comfortingly. “Better to let me off here than have both of us pay the price later on. You know there’s no way I’m gonna get all the way through to San Francisco.”

“Fucking California. Of all the places to hold on to a fucking bureaucracy during the apocalypse…”

“Dean.” Rough fingertips stroke his jaw. “Relax this before you chip a tooth.”

“I’m _relaxed_.”

“You’re a liar s’what you are, darlin’. And right now you need to drive in the other direction, ‘cause otherwise people are gonna start getting suspicious as to what you’re doing just sitting here.” And goddamn it, Benny’s got a point. Dean turns the car around and drives until they’re out of sight, then past that to a hole-in-the-wall town that used to be something out of a postcard before its picture perfect people fled it.

“What the fuck is Croatoan anyway?” Dean asks as he parks Baby on the main street, where the word has been written in red on the quaint storefronts that haven’t been shattered.

Benny shrugs. “Nothin’ that’ll bother me, probably.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re not staying here.”

“Dean…”

“I’m not gonna abandon you in some village of the damned, you asshole!”

“Dean.” Benny cups his jaw this time, and Dean hates how he responds to it, immediately turning to look at his lover. His fucking _lover_ …who ever thought he’d come out of the Rapture with someone of his own, someone he can care about who isn’t Sam…but then, there _is_ Sam. Dean can’t forget his brother any more than he can forget that he needs to breathe. “You gotta go after your brother alone from here. I’ll be fine.”

“No.”

“ _Dean_. What’s gonna mess with a vampire, huh?”

Dean brushes of Benny’s awful attempt at being comforting. “Yeah, speaking of that, how are you going to keep yourself alive without me around? Because if you plan on starving yourself out of some misguided sense of guilt or responsibility, I will absolutely kick your ass when I find you again.”

“Love how articulate you are when you’re angry at me,” Benny says with a little smile. “I’m sure there’s a town around here somewhere I can go and yell at people at until someone decides it’s time to off me.”

“Not funny.”

“Hey, it’s worked before.”

“Not _funny_ , asshole.”

“Dean.” And now he’s close and nuzzling the side of Dean’s face, and he smells like metal and blood and it shouldn’t make Dean’s heart ache but he feels like he’s dying, he wants Benny so bad. “Your brother has been your priority from day one. You won’t be happy until you’ve found him, and I won’t be happy if I get us killed on the way to him. You gotta go, Dean. Doesn’t have to be forever.”

                “You can’t stay here,” Dean says, but it’s weaker now.

                “I might, I might not. If I don’t, I’ll find a way to leave word. Although,” he glances around appreciatively. “This isn’t a terrible place to drop anchor. I won’t need to feed for quite a while, and I’ll wait here for you until I can’t wait any longer.”

                “Wait for me.” Dean shakes his head. “This place might as well be Purgatory, for all its welcome.”

                “Look on the bright side, darlin’, we ain’t been attacked yet.”

                “Jinx,” Dean says tiredly. He hates it, he loathes that he’s going to agree to this dumbass plan but he doesn’t have a better one, and he _needs_ to find Sam.

                “I’m not gonna be the regret that holds you back,” Benny says. “Go on, Dean. I’ll be all right.”

                Dean stares into Benny’s eyes. The look he’s getting is so soft, concerned and tender and full of emotions that Dean generally prefers to pretend don’t exist, only he can’t pretend right now because he knows he’s reflecting them right back like a mirror. “I hate this.”

                “Well, I love you.”

                “You _fucker_ , why did you have to say it?” Dean cries, and then he’s hauling Benny into an embrace, so tight that the vampire actually huffs with surprise as his ribs are squished. “Fuck you, fuck you, I can’t believe you fucking said it…”

                “Easy, darlin’.” He kisses Dean’s ear, then his cheek, and as Dean loosens his grip he kissed his lips, not hard and punishing like Dean is going for but still soft, still tender. It’s enough to make Dean’s heart try to rip right out of his chest, like everything in him, every last drop of blood is straining toward Benny. He doesn’t whimper, he doesn’t, but it’s not a good sound he makes, he knows that. Benny isn’t unaffected either, when he finally pulls back. The little smile is gone.

                “Go. Come back to me as fast as you fuckin’ can.” He starts to reach for the handle and Dean stops him.

                “Take the motherfucking Colt,” Dean rasps. “And some ammo and your blades, you dumb bastard.”

                Benny does, kisses Dean one more time, then he’s out of the car and blending into the shadows in a heartbeat. In almost no time Dean’s lost sight of him, and he resists the impulse to just scream and beat his fucking hands against the dash for a moment. Instead he stares straight ahead, whispers, “Love you too,” and guns it for Bakersfield.

                They test him with silver and salt and Borax, of all things. Dean doesn’t answer their questions beyond monosyllables, gets back in Baby and drives on. He gets tested again in Fresno, again in San Jose, where he ends up getting into a fistfight with one of the guys manning the checkpoint who just can’t keep his goddamn hands off of the merchandise. Seriously, if there’s one thing that Dean isn’t in the mood for tonight, it’s a son of a bitch winking at him and calling him “pretty.”

By the time he finally gets to past San Jose and the Stanford University campus, a new day is dawning. His eyes are gritty with sleeplessness, and the last thing he wants right now is to abandon Baby and go ask random people if they know a Sam Winchester, but he’s got no choice.

He hides the Impala in the bottom of a parking garage behind some random dumpsters, grabs his weapons—all of ‘em, it’s enough to weigh a man down but Dean’s not fucking around anymore—and heads for Stanford, ready to take some names and kick some ass.

In the end, finding Sam is ridiculously simple, though. Or, at least, finding out _about_ him is. There’s an Office of Rapture Information, of all the goddamn things, and after a thirty minute wait with a lot of people throwing worried stares his way, Dean sits down across from a pretty red-haired girl who introduces herself as Charlie and is working away on a laptop.

“What’s the name of the student you’re interested in?”

“Um, Sam. Winchester. Samuel Winchester. Pre-law, if that helps.

“It totally does,” she says. Charlie types a few things in, then frowns. “Oh boy.”

“What?” She looks at Dean worriedly and, okay, so that was maybe a bit of a serial killer voice, but c’mon, you can’t just throw an “oh boy” at him and expect him to react _well._ “Is he alive?” _Please God let Sammy be alive, please please please, I can’t lose him too…_

“He was…okay, there was an incident with his girlfriend, Jess. She, um, burned to death in a fire in their apartment. Shortly after that Sam tested positive for demonic interference. He wasn’t killed, though!” Charlie adds quickly. “He ran. The last information on him in the system is that he was heading south. You know, Los Angeles is amassing a huge demonic population, he might have gone there to find more of his own…kind.”

“ _I_ am his kind,” Dean says stiffly. “I’m his goddamn brother, and Sam is no demon.”

“The report file says his eyes turned yellow,” Charlie says apologetically. “That seems kinda demonic to me. Or, y’know, a sign of jaundice but he’s really too young to have those sorts of liver problems.”

Dean ignores that last part. “Los Angeles, huh?”

“Yeah. But it’s not safe for regular people down there!”

“I ain’t a regular person, sweetheart.” Dean stands up. “I’m a fuckin’ witness. Thanks for the info.”

“I’m sorry it wasn’t better.”

Dean leaves campus as fast as he walked there, gets halfway back to the garage before he has to dart into an alley and bend double, fight off the panic that threatens his very fragile composure. Jess, sweet, pretty Jess burned to death, oh god…and Sam, a demon? It can’t be. Can’t…but…

God, he wanted to sleep for a week. He wanted to sleep with Benny, Benny who he left a hundred miles ago, Benny who’s dueling with Sam for possession of Dean’s poor, battered heart. Fuck. _Fuck_.

Dean takes a deep breath through his nose. He can handle this. He can. He can backtrack to Croatoan town and pick up Benny, he can make it to Los Angeles. If it’s a demonic hotbed, then they’re probably focused on keeping the possessed in, not the regular joes out. They can go in and find Sam. Dean can still do it, he can still save his brother and his lover, it isn’t too late.

He smiles suddenly. He also happens to have an ace in the hole. Nice that it’s a Thursday, too. Dean straightens his back, clasps his hands together, shuts his eyes and murmurs, “Uh, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to Castiel to get his feathery ass down here.”

There’s a sudden ruffled sensation, followed immediately by, “That was not very reverent, Dean Winchester.”

Fuck reverence. Things are finally looking up.

 


End file.
